Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights

Quick! Who made the following comment: "I think it's important to realize that treating all disabled people as equal--with equal rights and responsibilities--is absurd. Many of the patients that come through any rehab hospital are there because of their own ignorance, negligence, stupidity or criminal activities." A member of a supremacist group? Nope. It was Dr. Kenneth Lefebre at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. How about this? "The legal requirement that 'the handicapped' be 'mainstreamed' is damaging to 'the normal child'." That was written by Eileen Gardner, appointee to the Reagan Education Department, in one of her policy papers. One more, and this one is the real shocker because the commentator has a disability herself: "Deny as we may want to, at the point when a person can not be totally independent physically from others, one is no longer equal in body. I do not want to be treated equally. I can still think, but for the life of me I can't think of a way to get rid of the wheelchair. Therefore, I am not on the same ground I used to be on. To me that makes my way not equal...How can we bury our heads so deep and say we are equal to the able bodies around us? We are not. That's why it is called a handicap, because it is." Comments like these only bolster the viewpoint Mary Johnson is fighting against in her perception-shattering book, "Make Them Go Away: The Case Against Disability Rights". She argues that people with disabilities are a minority just as women and people of color are nowadays. Disability, she posits, is a social and cultural idea, and not merely a "medical problem". Because people are perceived to be disabled, they are perceived by society to be unable, incapable of doing much for themselves or others. Johnson theorizes that the case against disability rights is strong right now because of this philosophy. It is also strong because "a disabled person's role in society was not to criticize it from a minority perspective--for they were not a true minority--but to work at becoming normal, to be rehabilitated if not cured." That, and there have been several lawsuits about the ADA, or Americans with Disabilities Act. Nobody likes lawsuits, so... ...no wonder most of society still thinks, "Make Them Go Away"!

Like all books regarding social activism it can come across as a little preachy but that is really not the point. Point is that the ADA is a useless bit of legislation and the entire act needs to be revisited and firmer classifications need to be established and keep in mind that this is person with a disability talking. The points raised in this book are totally valid, please read with an open mind before you judge it. I say that the issues are exactly the same as other equal rights movments of the past. Good job authors.

I found this book right on the money in regards to disability rights. I too was offended when it refers to "overcoming a disability as honorable". Unless you are disabled you have no right to tell someone who is disabled that "it is honorable." What's honorable about? Does anyone say the same thing to successful African Americans? Wouldn't they be offended by that remark? And I was offended by [email protected]'s review as he complained about businesses having to spend thousands of dollars to accommodate the handicapped. Accommodation might actually help everyone involved, you think? Apparently he lacks the intelligence to understand that the reviewer before him emphasized the parallel of discrimination in this country against African Americans and the disabled. The author of the book brings it home when she says disability can happen to anyone at anytime. Therefore, instead of [email protected] criticizing and patronizing the disability issue, he should hope that he never has an accident, ages, or has an illness leaving him disabled because then he'll be quite glad of the ADA and those disabled people who had to fight tooth and nail for the rights and equality African Americans received in the 60s.

Mary Johnson's book fills an important gap. We haven't understood the case against disability rights and we need to if we're going to refute it. As Johnson explains, we ignore it (with the claims of Reeve and Eastwood and of the right-wing law and economics approach) at our peril. Johnson's book is a call to take disability rights seriously, full of comment on court cases like Sutton, Williams and Garrett, and a plethora of disability issues including "special" education, accessible transit, employment and adaptive technology.I've already had the pleasure of using this book in the undergraduate university classroom (at Chapman University) and I'm eager to use it again.

Mary Johnson, long time editor and co-founder of the Ragged Edge, has been on the forefront of the struggle for disability rights in the United States for over 20 years. Highly respeced and a gifted editor and writer, Johnson has used her considerable skills to hone a book that is sure to be widely read and discussed. Her book will appeal to a wide cross section of people including disabled people seeking to understand their place in society, academics, lawyers, government officials, and health care professionals to mention but a few groups that could benefit greatly from reading Make Them Go Away.In my estimation, Johnson's book is the most important contribution that has been made in the burgeoning field of disability studies in the last decade. In part this is because she provides not only a history of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) but explains in detail exactly how the court has eviserated the law. Broken into two parts, the first half the case against disabilty rights and the second the case for disability rights, Johnson uses popular and controversial figures such as Clint Eastwood and Christopher Reeve to make her point that there is a long standing bias against the disabled in American society. In fact, she ably demonstrates the legal bias against the disabled begins before they even enter the courthouse. Sadly, Johnson also demonstrates the ADA is widely misunderstood by the general public and more often than not simply not considered to be a part of the civil rights movement. This is sad because many thought the law would lead to the end of the most base forms of discrimation disabled people face on a daily basis. Alienation and the lack of access and the concommitant isolation and disenfranchisement that comes with it has not been eliminated by the ADA. While the social reality is not positive, Johnson's book is one of the opening salvos in what looks to be a very long battle for disabled people's civil rights. As such, Make Them Go Away should be considered must reading for disability rights activists, lobbyists, lawyers and all those on the front lines of the battle for disability rights. Johnson's book should also be required reading in classes in disabiltity along with other classic works by Erving Goffman and Robert Murphy. In short, buy the book, read it carefully, and share it with all those who not only have an interest in disabilty rights but the rights that all Americans are supposed to share.